Qualcomm rolls out the Snapdragon 653, 626, and 427

At its 4G/5G summit in Hong Kong, Qualcomm announced two new SoCs in the mid-range Snapdragon 600 series, the Snapdragon 653 and Snapdragon 626. For the entry-level tier, the company is rolling out the Snapdragon 427.

All three SoCs come with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which delivers speeds of up to 300Mbps (Category 7) on the downlink and 150Mbps (Category 13) on the uplink. Also new is support for dual cameras and Quick Charge 3.0, as well as the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec for VoLTE calls.

The Snapdragon 653 retains the octa-core CPU configuration of the 652, offering four Cortex A72 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. Qualcomm increased the frequency of the A72 cores to 1.95GHz from 1.80GHz in the 652, which it says will lead to a performance increase of up to 10%. The A53 clusters is still clocked at 1.44GHz. The 653 also retains the Adreno 510 GPU, which has seen an increase in frequency as well. Qualcomm has doubled the addressable memory, making the Snapdragon 653 compatible with 8GB of RAM.

The Snapdragon 626 also sees a 10% increase in performance from the 625 thanks to a bump in CPU clocks on its two Cortex A53 clusters to 2.2GHz from 2.0GHz. The 626 comes with Qualcomm's TruSignal antenna boost technology, which is designed to improve signal reception in congested areas.

Finally, Snapdragon 427 features the same quad-core 1.4GHz CPU as the 425, but benefits from the X9 LTE modem and TruSignal antenna tech, as well as dual ISPs.

Qualcomm has mentioned that the Snapdragon 653 and 626 will be available before the end of the year, while the Snapdragon 427 will be making its way to consumer devices early next year.

Reader comments

Qualcomm rolls out the Snapdragon 653, 626, and 427

I had a SD650 powered device (Xiaomi RN3) and that was very capable so I can imagine the 653 will be a beast (although a mini beast).
And Harish, how come you are never on the AC podcast? There is the whole eastern hemisphere of Android you could be telling us about rather than listening about the machinations of Verizon and other terrible US networks.

I would be all over a 652 or a 653 powered phone with a GOOD CAMERA. And I don't buy that it takes a flagship Qualcomm chip to drive a good camera as flagship phones from 2 and years ago had better cameras then do today's midrange phones.